


Rue des Jours

by gloss



Category: Fantastic Mr. Fox
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-10
Updated: 2009-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-04 08:05:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do when your greatest moment is long past?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rue des Jours

As time goes on, the notoriety Ash enjoys for his participation in his dad's big caper persists. His sense of accomplishment does not. It fades, and he can feel himself becoming *that kid*. The one who did one big thing and nothing else.

Kristofferson, of course, has no such problem. His accomplishments just keep coming, regular as daybreak. He finishes top in their class, does a summer abroad in the Muir of Dinnet, enrolls in medical school. Even when he goes vegetarian, anathema for any fox, no one rolls their eyes or mocks him, flutters their hands or spits. His thoughtfulness is praised, his gentle nature discussed.

Everyone loves Kristofferson. How could you not?

"You look snazzy," Ash says at Kristofferson's graduation party. He gargles a sip of hard cider and sets down his cup. "Real snazzy."

Kristofferson shrugs with just one shoulder. His suit is dove-grey, fine-waled corduroy. Soft to the touch, soft as dawn. "Thanks."

Ash's left ear twitches. The mustard stain on his lapel burns through to his pelt. He is unkempt, yet this is his best cussed suit. "So. What've you been up to?"

Kristofferson looks around the party. Across the room, a large painted banner congratulates him; a portrait of him in mortarboard and honours ribbon is propped on the hearth. "Well. School, for one thing."

"Right," Ash says. "School and suchlike."

Then Agnes and Kristofferson's dad -- who by all rights should be named Kristofer, it's only *logical* -- tag-team Kristofferson and drag him away to be congratulated by yet another relative Ash has never met.

*

After a couple non-fox years, Ash moves into town. His parents are busy with baby Annabelle; besides, his dad is working on his book and his mother exploring plate tectonics in her landscapes. There's not really room for him any longer. There is *room*, to be sure, as their duplex is nearly as spacious as their beech-tree apartment had been.

All the same, he needs more. More room, more solitude.

He finds a nice little garret burrow at the back of an overgrown garden. The humans are rarely at home (imagine, having two houses, one just for weekends!) and when they are, they pay him no mind. He sets up his desk in the corner that gets a little sun through a crack in the sod, his bed down a level, nice and snug.

He gets a little attention for a White Cape doujinshi. He won't ever write as well as his father, nor draw as well as his mom, but he is okay with comics. He resurrects White Cape's long-dead kid sidekick Chicky, retconning his heroic death at the height of the myxomatosis epidemic as the product of an elaborate gambit. Once in the paws of the dastardly Le Loup Noir, Chicky was brainwashed. As The Jess, hooded like a slave and hobbled, he was sent on various villainous missions.

Ash firmly believes that, were he just given the chance, he could produce a good twenty-five issue arc that eventually reunites Chicky and White Cape. White Cape would have to acknowledge that Chicky is now a man, now an equal.

That acceptance would not be the end, no, sir. Indeed, it would only open new storytelling vistas.

He has trouble convincing the rats in charge over at the publishers of this.

*

Something is in the air. Ash has never been the best sniffer, but he's all right. He's competent enough that he can tell something is up. The hedge on the other side of the garden is scented with a bitter, tannin-rich fragrance. It's around his burrow-hole as well and outside his skylight.

If this were a comic book, Ash would be being watched. There would be a climactic confrontation --

WHITE CAPE: Who are you?

THE JESS: You know who I am. You know me better than you know yourself.

\-- and then a fight, punctuated by grunts and exclamations. One or both would crash through the skylight. Glass shatters across three panels. Then, sprawled below, they would catch their breath. Slowly, as blood trickled and bruises bloomed, recognition would dawn.

But this is real life, so nothing like that ever happens to him. (More than once, anyway.)

He is on his way across the garden, heading home with arms full of shopping bags -- squab curry takeaway from the place down the alley, new nibs and pot of ink, two packages from the post office -- when he smells it again. Stronger this time.

Like overboiled tea, or the sticky dirt formed by last year's fallen leaves in the forest. Dark. It makes his teeth want to grind, fills his eyes with water. It isn't just dark, it's *sad*.

His dad, if the stories are to be believed, can distinguish 483 different scents and secretions. He can read the emotional landscape as quickly and thoroughly as he devours his books. From a robin's autumn melancholy to a weasel's maternal exultation, a badger's reluctant loyalty to a fox's fleeting enlightenment. (That last one was Kristofferson, of course. He isn't even *Buddhist*. He's just that good.)

Ash is not his dad. So he just stands there, arms full and back aching, and swallows hard. "Hello?"

When the shrubbery stirs, his nose twitches. The leaves shift like raindrops, but it's only the wind.

He tries one more time. "If anyone's there, you should just come out."

The wind dies down and the leaves fold in.

"Fine," Ash calls. "Be a cloaca, I don't care."

Once he's home, he gobbles down his curry, reads his mail at his desk, and finishes off a bottle of cider. The scent still curls around the tip of his nose, tickles his ears. He can't seem to shake it off.

This is really starting to piss him off. He has work to do, he's still pretty peckish, and he's out of cider. Life just really cussing sucks sometimes.

He spits on the floor as he stands and heads for his bed. Maybe a nap to clear his head; that's what his mom always recommended, and Ash fought it tooth and claw every time. Still, it usually helped.

He drops off the ladder with three rungs to go and rolls right onto the futon. He hits a big lump, warmer and more solid than any pillow, and gets a faceful of that cussed scent.

Kristofferson is curled up on his side, facing away from Ash, the quilt pulled up over his shoulders. His pale fur looks like dandelion fuzz in the dark down here, white and fragile.

"Shove over, you're hogging --" Ash pokes Kristofferson's back and gets a few more centimeters. He wiggles under the quilt, tugs a little more of the pillow toward him, and slings his arm over Kristofferson's side.

He never did get as tall as his dad; he barely matches his mother's height. So Kristofferson is several centimeters taller, yet they fit just fine together. Ash tucks his muzzle into the warm pelt of Kristofferson's shoulder, tightens his paw around Kristofferson's chest, and fits his bent knees behind his cousin's. His tail lifts and wraps around Kristofferson's legs, and they make almost a perfect circle.

Not quite perfect: Ash is still small, Kristofferson's outsized, and they're never going to do it all right.

Still, nothing has been this comfortable since Ash left the whelping den.

The scent of sadness disperses in the dark. It rises out of the burrow, escapes in tendrils through the skylight and out the front door. Maybe that was Ash's doing: it isn't much, it certainly is neither grand nor fantastic, but it is something.

When the morning comes, all they smell is shed dreams and sticky sleep.

"Shut up," Ash tells him when Kristofferson starts to speak. "Coffee first, then stupid mushiness."

"Of course," Kristofferson says and smiles. His eyes are brighter than anything.


End file.
